WINTER PARK — City commissioners are divided between the gung-ho and the go-slow approaches to City Manager Tony Barrett's proposed shake-up of city departments.

But they did vote unanimously to approve the general framework of Barrett's proposals, while deciding to discuss his ideas some more before creating new management jobs or combining city departments.

The two major thrusts of Barrett's proposals are:

- To combine planning, zoning, building inspections and code enforcement into one community development department. People working in each of these areas would answer to a single new department head - a director of planning and community development.

- To bring the water and sewer operations of the utilities department into the public works department and transfer utility billing into the finance department.

Barrett said the changes are needed to streamline the city's planning and development review functions and to improve efficiency in utility operations.

The city manager, who made the proposals after reviewing city government operations through his first seven months on the job, also wants to transfer supervision of the Farmers Market from the planning department to parks and recreation.

The 18 proposals Barrett made to commissioners this week included asking the commission consider selling bonds to pay for expensive capital improvements, rather than rely strictly on a pay-as-you-go plan.

At Monday's commission workshop meeting, Barrett asked for blanket approval for all his proposals so that he could reorganize the departments by May 1. He said it was important to do it now so that planning can begin on next year's city budget with the new alignment of city operations.

Three commissioners seemed prepared to give him that green light. But Commissioner Rachel Murrah argued vigorously that before approving such sweeping changes, the commission needed more information to justify them.

For example, she noted that Barrett had not explained why he wants to put utilities under the public works department. Also, the city's utilities advisory board recommended against such a move but did not say why.

But Commissioner Pamela Peters argued that the commission should trust the city manager's judgment and should not solicit comments from advisory boards that do not play a role in day-to-day management.

''I don't think it needs to be dragged out for several months, and I don't think the citizens need to be brought in on the discussion phase of it,'' Peters said.

Richard Stevens, chairman of the utilities advisory board, said later that water and sewer utilities, which serve a large suburban area outside the city, are too large an operation to be included with street maintenance, stormwater management and the lakes under public works.

He said the utilities director should answer directly to the city manager, rather than go through another layer of bureaucracy.

Commissioner Peter Gottfried agreed with Peters that if changes were needed, they should be done now. ''We'll never get all the information we need. We should respect the city manager's decisions. We can kick it around and kick it around, but life goes on,'' he said.

But Murrah said she wanted to know more about what kind of problems Barrett perceives in city government and how his proposals would correct them.

She also wanted to know about the effect of the changes on employees who would lose department head status. Under the city charter, the hiring of department heads must be confirmed by the City Commission. Department heads have the right to appeal their dismissal to the commission, and they have a separate pension plan from other city workers.

City Attorney Brent McCaghren said Tuesday it is the commissioners' job to organize city government into departments. If they want to protect the status of certain people, they can simply designate those offices as departments.

Under Barrett's plan, the finance director, along with the directors of utilities, code enforcement and planning would no longer be department heads.

Barrett also wants to hire two more staff members for the planning division of what would be the new community development department.

Money to pay for those new employees, along with the new department head, would come from higher fees for building permits and planning and zoning reviews that Barrett will propose later. For the first time in more than a decade, some of those fees were raised less than two months ago.

Murrah said she still has objections to Barrett's decision to bring in a former employee last month to act as a ''management consultant'' on creating a community development department without first consulting the commission.

She said it was odd that the man, Bill Collins, should act as a consultant when he had also expressed an interest in the job he was recommending the city create. Collins had worked for Barrett in Nags Head, N.C.

Murrah said she wants the commission to discuss further her concerns about that visit and how it was paid for.

Collins' expenses were paid for from the travel budget for the city manager's office. Three commissioners have said they do not object to Barrett's handling of the situation.